A national LGBT fundraising effort is set to debut next month and will harness the power of social media to seek donations.
Called Give OUT Day, the first of its kind crowdsourcing effort on May 9 is enlisting LGBT nonprofits in all 50 states to take part. More than 300 groups, in rural areas and major cities, have already signed on.
In the Bay Area more than 40 LGBT charities and community-based organizations have agreed to participate in the fundraiser. Donors will be encouraged...

Imagine this scenario: Your child comes home from school one day and informs you that she’s feeling guilty that she has so much while others are in rough economic shape. What’s more, she says, she’s ashamed of her family’s wealth. She wants to give away all her stuff; she doesn’t want to invite her friends to your house.
Parents could be forgiven for finding this deeply irritating: How dare you feel guilty about what your family worked so hard...

In a laboratory game to assess how income levels affect charitable giving, participants are handed $10 in dollar bills and told that, if they like, they can put some in an envelope and give them to an anonymous partner. Psychologist Paul Piff has found that people making $150,000 or more a year give on average $2-$3, while lower earners give $6-$7.
“That’s an incredible difference,” says Piff, a social psychologist at the University of California,...

In this Thought Leaders video series, we take a look at where today's game changers find inspiration.
Jason Franklin is the executive director of Bolder Giving, a New York nonprofit that counsels individuals on how to incorporate philanthropy into their lives or entrepreneurial efforts. Bolder Giving's website features stories of people who have given a good chuck of their income to charity -- the idea is that those stories might inspire others to give as well, Franklin...

BRENDAN MARTIN
Age: 39
Vehicle: The Working World
Locations: Buenos Aires; Leon, Nicaragua; New York City
Brendan Martin grew up in Rochester, N.Y. His mother struggled after his parents' divorce, while his father, a computer-science Ph.D., built a business fortune.
Martin became fascinated by economics in high school, but he always found it odd that basic economic models appeared to view workers as costs to be minimized and eliminated. Was there a way,...

Three years ago, Toby Neugebauer, co-founder of Texas-based Quantum Energy Partners, and his family embarked on a 110-day trip around the world. Wealthy Britons had a long tradition of sending their children abroad to absorb some high culture and hobnob with the Right People in Paris and Berlin. But the Neugebauers were not remotely interested in giving their 9- and 11-year-old sons a 19th-century-style Grand Tour. No, instead of the Mona Lisa and Monte Carlo, they were taking ...

Most of us feel generous in December, the top month for charitable donations, reports the Atlas of Giving. But regardless of when you give, you want to make sure that the funds are actually used to do real good.
"Not knowing how their money will be spent sometimes holds people back from supporting a charity," says Jason Franklin, who teaches nonprofit management and philanthropy at New York University and is executive director of Bolder Giving, a nonprofit focused on helping...

Wendy DuBoe, president and CEO of United Way of Metropolitan Chicago, stood between a table of doughnuts and a station with bacon-wrapped stuffed jalapeño peppers at the Millennium Park kickoff party Friday for the organization's annual giving campaign.
She greeted guests and answered questions about United Way's new mission to focus on education, income and health issues in Chicago's neediest communities. In the past, United Way tried to help a wide swath of social...

On most weekday afternoons, Jason Franklin is frenetically busy in his crowded office on West 38th Street in Manhattan, fielding calls or pushing projects forward as the executive director of Bolder Giving, a nonprofit organization that promotes philanthropy.
But for several days in mid-August, Mr. Franklin, 32, decamped to a radically different environment, the bucolic Sundance Resort near Park City, Utah, where he happily unplugged to attend a biannual conference sponsored...

There are six common motivators that prompt large donations, said the director of Bolder Giving in a webinar sponsored by The Chronicle of Philanthropy
In a time of economic uncertainty when many nonprofits are seeing donations fall, one way to conquer a potential donor’s concerns about the economy is to learn whether it is personal or national discomfort that causes their reluctance. Learning the source of discomfort could lead to a donor’s realization that the gift should...